Sidra Khan
reports on Aisha Bhutta's bid to convert the world to Islam
The Guardian Newspaper, London
Thursday 8th May 1997

http://www.islamfortoday.com/scottish30.htm

Aisha Bhutta, also known as Debbie Rogers, is serene. She sits on the sofa in
big front room of her tenement flat in Cowcaddens, Glasgow. The walls are hung
with quotations from the Koran, a special clock to remind the family of prayer
times and posters of the Holy City of Mecca. Aisha's piercing blue eyes sparkle
with evangelical zeal, she smiles with a radiance only true believers possess.
Her face is that of a strong Scots lass - no nonsense, good-humoured - but it is
carefully covered with a hijab.

For a good Christian girl to convert to Islam and marry a Muslim is
extraordinary enough. But more than that, she has also converted her parents,
most of the rest of her family and at least 30 friends and neighbours.

Her family
were austere Christians with whom Rogers regularly attended Salvation Army
meetings. When all the other teenagers in Britain were kissing their George
Michael posters goodnight, Rogers had pictures of Jesus up on her wall. And yet
she found that Christianity was not enough; there were too many unanswered
questions and she felt dissatisfied with the lack of disciplined structure for
her beliefs. "There had to be more for me to obey than just doing prayers when I
felt like it."

Aisha had
first seen her future husband, Mohammad Bhutta, when she was 10 and regular
customer at the shop, run by his family. She would see him in the back, praying.
"There was contentment and peace in what he was doing. He said he was a Muslim.
I said: What's a Muslim?".

Later with
his help she began looking deeper into Islam. By the age of 17, she had read the
entire Koran in Arabic. "Everything I read", she says, "was making sense."

She made
the decision to convert at 16. "When I said the words, it was like a big burden
I had been carrying on my shoulders had been thrown off. I felt like a new-born
baby."

Despite her
conversion however, Mohammed's parents were against their marrying. They saw her
as a Western woman who would lead their eldest son astray and give the family a
bad name; she was, Mohammed's father believed, "the biggest enemy."

Nevertheless, the couple married in the local mosque. Aisha wore a dress
hand-sewn by Mohammed's mother and sisters who sneaked into the ceremony against
the wishes of his father who refused to attend.

It was his
elderly grandmother who paved the way for a bond between the women. She arrived
from Pakistan where mixed-race marriages were even more taboo, and insisted on
meeting Aisha. She was so impressed by the fact that she had learned the Koran
and Punjabi that she convinced the others; slowly, Aisha, now 32, became one of
the family.

Aisha's
parents, Michael and Marjory Rogers, though did attend the wedding, were more
concerned with the clothes their daughter was now wearing (the traditional
shalwaar kameez) and what the neighbours would think. Six years later, Aisha
embarked on a mission to convert them and the rest of her family, bar her sister
("I'm still working on her). "My husband and I worked on my mum and dad, telling
them about Islam and they saw the changes in me, like I stopped answering back!"

Her mother
soon followed in her footsteps. Marjory Rogers changed her name to Sumayyah and
became a devout Muslim. "She wore the hijab and did her prayers on time and
nothing ever mattered to her except her connections with God."

Aisha's
father proved a more difficult recruit, so she enlisted the help of her newly
converted mother (who has since died of cancer). "My mum and I used to talk to
my father about Islam and we were sitting in the sofa in the kitchen one day and
he said: "What are the words you say when you become a Muslim?" "Me and my mum
just jumped on top of him." Three years later, Aisha's brother converted "over
the telephone - thanks to BT", then his wife and children followed, followed by
her sister's son.

It didn't
stop there. Her family converted, Aisha turned her attention to Cowcaddens, with
its tightly packed rows of crumbling, gray tenement flats. Every Monday for the
past 13 years, Aisha has held classes in Islam for Scottish women. So far she
has helped to convert over 30. The women come from a bewildering array of
backgrounds. Trudy, a lecturer at the University of Glasgow and a former
Catholic, attended Aisha's classes purely because she was commissioned to carry
out some research. But after six months of classes she converted, deciding that
Christianity was riddled with "logical inconsistencies". "I could tell she was
beginning to be affected by the talks", Aisha says. How could she tell? "I don't
know, it was just a feeling."

The classes
include Muslim girls tempted by Western ideals and need in salvation, practicing
Muslim women who want an open forum for discussion denied them at the local
male-dominated mosque, and those simply interested in Islam. Aisha welcomes
questions. "We cannot expect people blindly to believe."

Her
husband, Mohammad Bhutta, now 41, does not seem so driven to convert Scottish
lads to Muslim brothers. He occasionally helps out in the family restaurant, but
his main aim in life is to ensure the couple's five children grow up as Muslims.
The eldest, Safia, "nearly 14, Alhamdulillah (Praise be to God!)", is not averse
to a spot of recruiting herself. One day she met a woman in the street and
carried her shopping, the woman attended Aisha's classes and is now a Muslim.

"I can
honestly say I have never regretted it", Aisha says of her conversion to Islam.
"Every marriage has its ups and downs and sometimes you need something to pull
you out of any hardship. But the Prophet Peace by upon him, said: 'Every
hardship has an ease.' So when you're going through a difficult stage, you work
for that ease to come."

Mohammed is
more romantic: "I feel we have known each other for centuries and must never
part from one another. According to Islam, you are not just partners for life,
you can be partners in heaven as well, for ever. Its a beautiful thing, you
know."